So, because a lot of gamers have never watched a non-Michael Bay movie, or read all the way through a book, a lot of them found themselves upset by Mass Effect 3′s endings.
“Wait a minute! This didn’t bring perfect, tidy closure to every plotline! Even though I avoided picking the obvious evil options, some bad things still happened to my character! It…it made me feel sad! Video games end with a ‘Congratulations’ screen and a princess. Where was my princess?! ”
Don’t worry guys, you’re getting your princess. Yup, faced with a seemingly unending wave of frothing nerd entitlement, BioWare is caving and releasing “Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut” a free DLC pack that will provide more “context and clarity” for fans upset by the currently available endings.
BioWare continues to cling to the last tattered shreds of it’s artistic integrity, claiming there will be no all-new endings where everyone lives, Shepard gets married to the most beautiful girl/guy/creature in the galaxy and goes to live on Planet Cupcake. They’re simply fleshing out the existing endings. We’ll see how long that lasts.
So there you go. I don’t want to sound harsh, but if you actually download this DLC you’re a big baby. No really, there are melancholy endings where people die in entertainment made for 10-year-olds like the Star Wars movies and Harry Potter books. What BioWare did with the ending of Mass Effect wasn’t crazy, or excessively artsy-fartsy, it was something done in mainstream entertainment all the time. Grow up.
via The Mary Sue
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Agreed.
While I was definitely satisfied with the ending as it played out, I’m not averse to them expanding things a little bit more. I get where SOME of the people complaining are coming from, but it’s insane to me how entitled these people feel to an ending that fits their own personal specifications, as if Bioware didn’t pour their heart and souls into the entire game and felt like this was the most appropriate ending for them.
I thought the criticism was over the different endings being basically identical, not that they were too bleak.
I somehow doubt there’d be this degree of outrage if there were multiple similar upbeat endings.
Seriously Nate? You really believe that instead of all of the endings being identical as they were, that if all the endings were Shepard eating Red, Blue or Green ice cream with the star-child while everyone holds hands and sings kumbaya with flaming reapers falling in the background, that people still wouldn’t be in an uproar over it?
You have to understand Saosin, the hate over the ending has been going on long enough that now the cool kids make fun of the people who were upset about the ending. Dont you see how this works?
Saosin — yup.
I don’t think the endings were terrible. I mean yeah I was bummed when all the mass effects blew up in EVERY ending but hey whatever. I was just upset that there wasn’t more personalized endings based on your choices. Even a Fallout ending video explaining the future of each character would of been nice. Almost a review of how you changed the Galaxy.
I was expecting Shepard to die. I. Have no problem with that. Tragic or melancholy endings are fine with me. What I do mind is a poorly thought out and even more poorly executed ending. A change in the color of effects and 3 choices that have no distinguishable (other than the afore mentioned colors) outcomes is moronic in such a epic game. I will be getting the free DLC for no other reason than to get a little bit closer to the amazing conclusion promised by Bioware. Considering we tend to vote with our money, Bioware was wise to try to win back a bit of good PR. If you were pleased with the original outcome of the game, by all means, don’t download it and go about your life. My condolences to your imagination.
This is a bullshit criticism. The problem with the ending is not that it is happy or sad; it is that it introduces spiritual fairy tale nonsense into a sci-fi techy series. All of the endings are the same, except for slight color differences. Furthermore the series abandons all of its themes in a matter of seconds. And don’t forget about all of the glaring plot holes.
You clearly did not play the series and do not understand exactly what the issue is, so kindly be quiet until you have.
Registered just to post my uttet disagreement with the condescending tone of this piece whixh reads – and I’m making an assumption here – as if it’s been written by someone who has never played any of the Mass Effect games.
The ending to 3 was disappointing for a number of reasons, but the melancholic tone wasnt one of them. Shepherd’s fate was pretty much a given, and the final section on Earth, where you have the chance to say goodbye to everyone just put the tin lid on it.
The biggest issues were the (literal) deus ex machina dropped into the story with no foreshdadowing, and the sideways step the endings took which ignored any of the choices made in any of the previous games, never mind the gaping plot holes created in the process.
Personally I would prefer an endng that was rewritten to not include the suddenly-a-starchild, but I’ll take one that explains where the Normandy was going, what the Sol system will do now with 20000 starships and crews orbiting Earth and no Mass Relay, and maybe a little more on the fate of the rest of the supporting cast.
The current ending is on a par with that of System Shock 2. I dont think its too much to have expected more from Bioware.
Exactly!
Yeah, the guy who wrote this post COMPLETELY misunderstood why people were upset at the ME3 ending. It had absolutely nothing to do with the ending being “sad” or “melancholy”. It was that a video game series rooted deeply in player choices and consequences completely disregarded those roots by making every ending nearly identical. Not only that, the ending was filled with plot-holes and even things that completely disregard the games own lore from previous ME’s.
I knew Shepard would die from the very first I heard that ME was going to be a trilogy and that ME3 would be the end of Shepard’s story. A heroes journey almost always ends with the hero sacrificing himself. So this ending was FAR from shocking.
I typically like Gamma’s posts, but this was shockingly uninformed.
Popular games with sad endings no one complained about.
Neir
Final Fantasy X
Red Dead Redemption
Shadow of the Colossues
Ico
GTA IV
The Darkness
The Darkness 2
Persona 3
People hate the ending because it was goddamn awful.
Mother fucker you read Batman comics and Game of Thrones. Don’t act like you have any great grasp of masterful narrative storytelling.
This post is so amazingly uninformed, that I’m wondering if he didn’t just post it to get more site hits from people like us to tell him how wrong he is?
Did we just get trolled?
Of course we got trolled. But at least we are bringing to light what the real issues with ME3 are.
Got me. I wanted you to post a dozen frothing comments full of copy-and-pasted arguments from “We Hate BioWare” messageboards. Fell right into my trap.
This post is pretty ill-informed. Most fans, myself included, took issue with nonsensical, canon busting elements of the ending. I haven’t heard much crying over no “princesses.” In fact, one of the complaints is that Shepard’s love interest is alive in the ending cut scene with no explanation as to how that happened.
Ignorant. Trolling for traffic seems like a strong possibility.
I never played any of the Mass Effect games, but I do understand the upset over them. Not necessarily to the degree that fans went, but I can totally undersgand why someone would choose to download the extra endings. If I did own and play the games, I’d still download it even if I was pleased with the endings. It’s free, and I’d be interested to see how much was changed, so why not?
And my understanding was that the problem wasn’t that the endings were too depressing or open ended, it’s that the games involved the effects your choices have on the outcome of a bigger picture, and that after three games of making choices, you find that it was all going to have more or less the same outcome no matter what. Why not call the game No Effect? I think it also had something to do with the second game, but since I’ve never played the game, I’m not certain.
“Thank you Commander Shepard! But our Princess is on another planet!”
Wow, rapidly losing faith in this site.
Don’t worry, the commenters are usually better.
Actually Nate, I was meaning your article,not the comments.
Congratulations, I’ve been reading stuff from uproxx for years now, never had a reason to register and post. You did it Nate!
Your coverage of this issue has been deplorable. You lack knowledge of the issues at hand, and you lack the journalistic integrity to do anything more than spout your uninformed opinion on the subject. Your obvious condescending attitude is exactly why there is a backlash against ‘mainstream’ gaming media.
Allow me make a judgement about you, with the same amount of knowledge and research as you put in for this article: You’re a shitbag who doesn’t deserve the revenue you earn from typing up this crap, and I heard you go to craigslist to find young Taiwanese ladyboys for you to frolic with in your hottub full of jello.
I look forward to seeing if this becomes a trend. Seems pretty unprecedented. Wonder what that says about gamer culture. I also wonder about the person(s) who started this whole movement, what kind of lives they have.
I think my favorite part of this ridiculously stupid post is the fact that the author’s not even trying to discuss or defend his position in the comment section; Rather, he’s just making smart ass retorts to his readers that are clearly showing him how incorrect his thought process is. For the 185th time, we’re not pissed because Shepard died, or because it was a sad ending. We’re pissed because Bioware didn’t finish the story that we started well over 5 years ago and put hours into customizing with our decisions. Then you add in the unbelievably dumb plotholes, and it feels like a slap in the face to anyone with a working brain. THAT’s the problem. No one was expecting the Reapers to rain out Corgi puppies after he punched Harbinger in the eyehole; We want to see what happened to our story.
…and I don’t believe you.
Games with multiple endings not really offering much differentiation between their endings isn’t a new thing. Games have been promising “mutliple endings” and only half delivering for decades.
“We want to see what happened to our story” — You saw what happened, you just didn’t like it.
Most of what BioWare did with the endings to Mass Effect 3 was nothing new or something to be expected. The only really out of the box thing they did was kill the main character in most of the endings. The rage that resulted didn’t happen because BioWare gave fans overly similar, mediocre endings — it happened because they gave them overly similar, mediocre endings that all killed off the main character.
The response to the Mass Effect endings is unprecedented, and the fact that Sheperd dies in most of the endings is an absolutely essential part of the dark formula that made it happen. I 100% believe that if there was at least one ending where Sheperd unequivocally survives, this wouldn’t have happened. Is it the only reason people are upset? No. But if you’re going to pretend it’s not even a factor, then I’m not taking your arguments seriously.
Oh, by the way, I didn’t spend my weekend writing lenghty responses to every split-flecked post in this thread because I was out of town for Easter. Dreadfully sorry about that.
Fair enough Nate. I am not taking any future posts on this site seriously. Actually, I may just pass on this site altogether in the future. It’s one thing to deal with trolls in the comments but in the articles now as well? Yep,time for me to move on.
”…and I don’t believe you.”
You caught me. I just want to lie to a stranger on a blog about a video game because it’s awesome. Good job.
”“We want to see what happened to our story” — You saw what happened, you just didn’t like it.”
No, we didn’t. We have no idea how our story ended. How did the Krogan handle their new power and ability to procreate? Did Tali finally rejoin her people on Rannoch? Why were my entire crew, INCLUDING the people that were standing right next to me at the end, somehow end up on the Normandy, which is running away from the fight when they’ve stood next to me suicide mission after suicide mission? That’s three examples off the top of my head that I immediately thought of. Not important to you, perhaps, but to people like me who’ve invested 5 years and well over 100 hours of gameplay, it matters.
”Oh, by the way, I didn’t spend my weekend writing lenghty responses to every split-flecked post in this thread because I was out of town for Easter. Dreadfully sorry about that.”
I didn’t say anything about the length of your replies. I commented on the snarky, rude attitude in your replies. You’ve continued with that. I’m all for being hip and awesome because you’re a blogger and shit, but maybe you shouldn’t spit in the eye of the people who are reading your stuff? Disagreeing is fine; Being an assclown isn’t.
Indoctrination theory – search that on youtube, watch 20 mins of mass effect-ending-dissemination and have every one of your minds blown. There’s too many little details that don’t make sense, and considering Bioware’s usual quality of story-telling, there’s a reason for it. I guarantee you the extended ending DLC has been the plan all along.